In recent weeks, America’s airwaves have been deluged by messages placed by Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens, warning that the country is being taken for $700 billion for foreign oil this year, with still more to follow, a devastating loss amounting to “the largest transfer of wealth in human history.”

While very shocking, the Pickens ads are in fact understated, because the OPEC oil cartel is not just looting the United States, but the whole world, and will accumulate over $1.5 trillion in net profits this year. The entire U.S. Fortune 500 is worth $18 trillion. At their current rate of take, OPEC will acquire enough cash to buy majority control of every leading company in the United States within six years. This is a direct threat to American independence. “It’s wrecking our economy,” Pickens says. He’s right about that too.

America owes a debt of gratitude to T. Boone Pickens for stepping forward to sound the alarm over this national emergency. This is all the more true, since as an oilman, Pickens could simply have followed the model of others in the business and just sat tight, enjoying record profits while the country goes under. Instead, he chose to act as a patriot.

So hats off to Mr. Pickens. That said, the plan he is advancing for dealing with the crisis — build windmills to release natural gas from electricity generation so it can be used to power compressed natural gas (CNG)-driven cars, displacing gasoline in the process — is technically flawed and needs to be revised.

While a net exporter twenty years ago, the United States today imports about 18% of its natural gas. So without a very substantial change in our electric power generation portfolio, shifting from gasoline to natural gas would just shift us from one imported fuel to another. Wind power is an improbable candidate for achieving such a shift. Simply to replace the 18% of our natural gas we currently import would require multiplying the nation’s current total wind power tenfold; to free up enough domestic natural gas to replace half our gasoline would require a thirty-fold wind power increase. The feasibility of doing this is very doubtful, not merely because of the size of the project but because wind power is intrinsically unreliable. When the wind speed drops in half, power output drops by a factor of eight, so wind simply cannot provide the baseload power. Rather, it can only be used as an as-available auxiliary to reduce somewhat the net overall fuel consumption of a fossil-fuel-driven baseload system that must have — and frequently run at — full power capacity to meet the needs of its customers. Replacing natural gas power generators with nuclear or coal-fired systems would be possible in principle, as both of these can provide reliable baseload power, but would take many years and entail many other problems.

67 Comments, 67 Threads

1.
John Samford

T.B. has gone senile. He used to be a businessman. He seems to have forgotten what it means to compete. How is a factory that only produces when the wind blows going to compete with a factory that is working two full shifts? The answer; It doesn’t and can’t.
If wind power is so great, why did steam powered ships replace windpowered ships? Maybe because a guy that could get his goods to market on a regular and timely basis has an economic advantage of one who has to wait for the wind to blow or the sun to shine. But wait, that isn’t the socialist way, it can’t be true.
Tell me Mr. Pickens, when the breeze falls off and the factory has no ‘tricity, do you send the workers home? But wait, you can’t do that, how will those workers buy anything is they don’t get thir paychecks? Mayb we can go to full monte Socialism, you know, where the workers pretend to work and the state pretends to pay them.
If we do that, we won’t need no stinkin businessmen, nor rich, crooked OIL men either. Nationalize the OIL industry and let all the tired, senile, old men like you retire. After the Government takes everything you own, of course.
T.B. must have been listening to Ohhhhh……BAAMA. From the empty suit to the empty head.
Drill babe`, DRILL.

John, “Drill the babes,” you say? Well, at least your not a cultural conservative.

I think an Oil Man who goes to Washington for help must have abused spouse syndrome. “I know when you smacked me before it was my fault but I really do love you…”

Well, we know the exclusive Senate Yachting Club opposes Windmills off the coast because they might have to look at them when they go sailing. Now the Senate Yacht Club has come out against developing our off shore oil resources.

You see, lots of just plain Senate folks go to Davos, Switzerland in the winter and ski and make friends while they are there. And they invite these ski friends to come to the US and go sailing and become sailing friends. Naturally, they don’t want them to have to look at an oil rig on the edge of the horizon.

Meanwhile, they are for having five million windmills in the “wind blessed” Midwest. The reason for this is simple: they don’t go sailing in the Midwest. Meanwhile, they are realistic and realize that Washington DC, which they represent, needs power — lots and lots of power — and it got to come from somewhere. Why not the rest of the Country? I mean, what’s it there for?

In a few years, when Midwesterners go driving, they can play “count the windmills” with their children. So a mother will say, “Becky, how many windmills have you counted on your side of the road?” And Becky will say, “1,482.” And the mother will say, “and Tommy, how many have you counted on your side?” And Tommy will say, “845,362.” And the mother will say, “Gee, boys are better at math.”

I appreciate Mr. Rubins comments that T. Boones plan is full of wholes. And no one has apparently thought about the task of taking the windmills down when they become useless or can no longer receive government subsidies. They are and will be a blot on the landscape for decades to come .
But as to the Rubin plan , when a solution begins with..have Congress pass a bill. You know my axiom about the first impulse of every Utopian is to make the people obey the government.

What I do not understand from the media is why we are not trying all methods of energy; not just one such as wind power. Flex fuels offer interesting results; but at a cost of increasing the biomass used. We should increase America’s resources on energy with AK & continental drilling, exploration of alternative methods of biomass fuels, nuclear (French’s lèse majesté against Environmentalist), solar, wind, etc… The American people should decide what type of energy would best serve their customers and enhance their coiffers. And then, ‘Buy America Energy’ should be our focus for the furture.

I’m sold on flex fuel, but I think we also better start building nuke plants, and get over our fear of coal. The Chinese topped us in CO2 production last year and are building coal fired plants like crazy and will not stop.

People have been warning for years that environmentalists would damage the economy, and here it is. If we keep kowtowing to them (and their neverending parade of crises), we will be unable to compete at all very shortly.

Pickens must be self delusional. The answer to America’s self inflicted energy problem is; laissez-faire capitalism amongst the USA and other free nations. Pickens loses all credibility by accepting the green agenda as valid. Then he has the audacity to promote windmill technology with government subsidies no less, i.e. sticking it to the taxpayer again. NOTE TO PICKENS; come back down to planet earth.

Pickens is a West Texas good ol boy. HIs wind farm is on a neighbor’s piece of property and the taxpayers of Texas are going to pay for the power lines to bring the unreliable power into the grid. Texas politics is almost as much fun as LA politics.

Holy Toledo, you mean we’re actually buying things from other countries? That’s terrible! The thought that we send money anywhere else in exchange for anything is disastrous. I think all trade should go one way. People should pay us for our goods and services, not the other way around.

Frankly, we probably shouldn’t even be doing that. This whole commerce thing is too complicated and scary.

Evidently you don’t know what natural gas is used for in America. It is not for base load, it is for peaker plants. Wind and natural gas are dispatchable in the same time frame. About 15 minutes. So if the wind is blowing you can shut down the peakers. When the wind declines you can start them up again.

In addition distributed wind can supply about 20% of nameplate rating as base load. Not bad since a wind plant delivers about 33% of nameplate rating on average.

I think the real point for all of us is to reduce dependence on oil, especially if it’s imported and reduce the cost of power. Low cost power is vital to an industrial economy, and we have ignored this infrastructure issue for 20 years. Virtually nothing has been done because so many corporations now run on next quarter’s results. They simply cannot justify a 15 or 20 year ROI on an expensive plant, whether wind, solar, nuclear or conventional when shareholders are demanding steady returns and management is demanding 7 figure salaries. We need systemic change to make this happen. There was a reason public utilities were structured as they were before deregulation. We need to find a new balance.

As an owner of a flex-fuel vehicle, I can say that it is not a good product. My F-F Grand Caravan went from 24 mph on gasoline to 18 mph on E85, and the performance also seriously suffered.

BTW: What TB Picken’s is really after is water rights, and will use the wind power transmission lines as a corridor for water transportation. Look it up.

I am ok with some wind power I think they are somewhat useful. However wind is currently receiving a $24 / MWh subsidy from taxpayers and may not be feasible without your tax dollars, and lots of them.

My engineer friend who works for a company that builds these turbines tells me that because of the unpredictability of the wind that power plants idle near 90% output, ready to take up the slack when the winds stops. Is that true?

Doesn’t that negate any value of “wind energy” if standby plants are putting CO2 in the air anyway?

I have long held the opinion that anything T. Boone Pickens does is designed primarily to transfer large amounts of money from your wallet to his. Pardon my skepticism but I can’t think of any other reason why he would come up with something so unworkable.

I generally agree with Robert Zubrin’s comments, but there is one significant point that should be made about the 18% of natural gas that is imported. I don’t fear a transfer of wealth to our source of imported natural gas: Canada. Canada participates in two-way trade with the US, buying our goods and services, and they are not threatening to kill us last I heard. Zubrin may also be discounting recent developments in unconventional sources of natural gas.http://www.naturalgas.org/overview/unconvent_ng_resource.asp
Unconventional sources like the Barnett Shale in North Texas have gone from nothing to huge in the last decade and the drilling and well completion techniques learned apply to several other similar fields.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnett_Shale

In addition, natural gas has the unique advantage that it’s LESS EXPENSIVE than gasoline while alcohol fuels are currently more expensive. The high cost of a short range CNG tank would pay for itself over the life of the car. An interesting combination would be a bi-fuel CNG and alcohol car with a small CNG tank for driving to work using cheap natural gas and a tank for alcohol for longer trips. This combination would allow use of a much higher engine compression ratio for better alcohol and CNG power and efficiency than a flex-fuel vehicle that can also use gasoline.

T. Boone Pickens is a rent seeking weasel. He has a financial interest in Clean Energy Fuels which sells compressed natural gas at high pump prices to local governments and he benefits from wind power government subsidies. Texas has both wind power and natural gas, but neither would likely compete on price with aggressive use of coal for electric power. In my opinion his investment depends on government to block coal competition.

This is simple, isn’t it? We must do it all. Economics, national security, even environmental concerns demand this. The more diverse and flexible our energy supplies are, the less vulnerable they will be to any type of disruption, and the better it will be for the environment in a real, practical way.

Lift the moratoriums, reduce the regulatory barriers while raising accountability for accidents, get rid of any tax breaks, and let the free market work. Future generations are counting on us. Please, if nothing else, at least do it for the children.

The plan that T.B. Pickens has written may have some holes in it, but before too many people jump on only the faults and start criticizing it, what have they done. TBP has put forth an idea that involves alternate fuels, conservation, and drilling. That is certainly more than either our illustrious congress or even the “gang of 10″ have done.

Passing more government regulations is immoral just as subsidizing Pickens will be immoral: both “solutions” require stealing from some individuals for the benefit of others or the so-called “public interest” decided by others. Only free markets can create consistently sustainable supplies by and for individuals and their freely-chosen incorporations.

We have allowed our so-called leaders, beginning with Truman, to let arabs steal OUR oil wells. It was the knowledge, inventiveness, risk-taking, capital and hard work of non-Arab companies who created the oil wells, and those companies were the victims of theft.

Arab wealth in nothing more than loot. Morality demands that we take it all back with pride – NOW.

Here’s how it works. There is a big demand for water in Dallas. There is a lot of underground water in the Ogalalla. How do we get all that yummy water from Roberts county to Dallas? Well, we need a pipeline. How are we going to get the right of way for a pipeline? The Enviros won’t like it. I know, we’ll build a bunch of windmills and request the right of way using eminent domain to build a high tension line for all that juice. Then we’ll put a pipeline under the powerline. The windmills give us cover with the enviros and we make a mint with all the water rights we’ve bought up in the Panhandle.

Converting a certain number of government fleet vehicles to CNG isn’st a bad idea, AS PART OF A LARGER, MORE COMPREHENSIVE PLAN; many bus systems are already running on CNG. But wind won’t replace the production profile of gas, which is used mostly for peaking, and not for baseload.

This is naive. He needs to stick to oil and gas, and defer to electricity experts when he talks about electricity. Even nuke wouldn’t be an acceptable substitute for gas in the power grid, because nuke produces baseload, and you can’t adjust the output over the course of the day to handle the peak loads that we’re currently using gas for.

Dr. Zubrin seems to be suffering from tunnel vision. Granted wind will not, can not, provide enough power to free us from the need for gas-fired generation. If you will look, though, it can and should become one of the many legs supporting our power needs. Solar power needs to be in the mix, as do nuclear, oil, gas, coal, thermal, and hydraulic sources. Each has some problem, or something about it we do not like, but by using all of them, we can avoid being stuck with those problems. Not enough wind? use solar. Too many clouds? what about dams and hydro-electricity. No damable rivers? build some nuclear plants. Too many earthquakes? prime area for thermal power. We have a bunch of legs under this stool. Don’t get stuck trying to depend on just one or two. My electric bill says I’m getting power from gas, coal, and nuclear sources. T. Boone’s windmills are probably too far northwest of me (Houston) to figure in on my mix, but I sure wouldn’t mind if they did.
Right now we are spending billions of dollars every year for oil, and we know some of those dollars are buying death for American soldiers. It is intelligent, and patriotic, to do whatever we can to reduce that. Mr. Pickens is doing his part, and I hope he makes money from it. Every well we drill, every nuclear plant or coal-fired plant we build will be another part. Didn’t somebody say something about long journeys beginning with a single step?

Some of the comments here have touched on the subsidies available to wind power developers. In fact, at the federal level, wind enjoys a whopping 2 cent/kwh production tax credit. There are undoubtedly lots of goodies available at the state level as well. The fact is that wind cannot survive without taxpayer largess, and that Congress signed us all about as contributors to this fee-good part of the so-called green agenda. As some have said, wind farms don’t harness energy; they produce tax benefits.

Solving our energy problem isn’t either/or. We should try it all out and we will find out what works economically, environmentally and reliably. Zubrin’s flex-fuel arguments are sound and flex-fuel is a component of McCain’s energy plan, which includes drilling, nuclear, wind, solar, clean coal and biomass (don’t forget hydro and geothermal). What’s good about flex-fuel, it can get underway now with minimal cost and promote the conversion of service stations into all-fuel suppliers. This happened rapidly in Brazil once the government got behind flex-fuel for all new vehicles. It’s no coincidence that Brazil now supplies all of the fuel it needs for transportation. Drivers choose whatever fuel combination makes economic sense to them; no question gasoline gets more mileage, but competition in fuel costs dictates what’s the best combination at any one time.

Regarding energy sources: if it is technologically possible and also profitable to do, and is not legislated or regulated into unprofitability, it will be done. This is kind of like the internet “Rule 34″ applied to energy.

Texas got windmills because they became both technologically feasible and profitable, partly through new legislation allowing construction of highly profitable new coal plants if less-to-non windmills also were built. Otherwise, these windmills likely would not be profitable at all for the energy company, and would not exist.

But nobody has mentioned that NUKE PLANTS are unprofitable only because of the environmental legal shenanigans that delay their permitting and construction. NUKE PLANTS are clean, efficient, long-lasting, and profitable, except when legislated and sued into unprofitability or inability to be built. BUILD MORE NUKE PLANTS. Heck, this is one area where emulating the French is not to be disdained.

I might be perfectly willing to listen to much of this nonsense, but not before:

1. The Federal Reserve targets and achieves steady, stable $100/ounce gold together with a Bretton-Woods style regime for inter-currency stability. Let’s wring the speculative money out of the equation and get back to looking solely at supply/demand.

2. Fat Gore, Slim Pickens and all their investors pony up for single state demonstration projects. No tax subsidies, no govt grants, no public money of any kind. If they can’t do a state, they can’t do it nationally. If they can’t pay for it, neither should we. If things are so dire as they say, let them prove their contentions with their own blood, sweat, and stock options.

Don’t look now, but the market is already solving the problem. We don’t need the government to do anything, thank you very much Mr. Obama, Mr. McCain.

OPEC caused a solution when they raised their price too high. Plug-in hybrids are about four times as efficient as current vehicles. Toyota and GM are racing each other to market. In the US, we use zero imported oil to fuel electrical power plants: 51% coal, 19% nat gas, 20% nuclear, the rest hydro, windmills, whatever. If commuters charge their batteries at night, the major U S demand for oil will evaporate. Adam Smith’s invisible hand is moving …and it’s going to crush OPEC. OPEC doesn’t get it. It has started raining and they are buying umbrellas when they should be building dikes.

“…every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.” – A. Smith

Pickens is correct about energy imports, and also correct about getting the electric grid off of natural gas. However, when it comes to the wind farms, one needs to look behind the curtain a bit.

Pickens may be crazy to believe that wind energy is viable on a commercial scale without major advances in battery technology, but more likely, he’s crazy like a fox.

Behind the scenes, Pickens wind farm activities are really aimed at doing two things, 1. Getting the ability to use eminent domain to acquire the right of way needed for his water projects in Texas, and 2. Buying off the Greenies so they won’t fight him as much on said water projects.

It’s also likely that he’ll use the wind farm ruse to power nothing other than his water projects, albeit with massive subsidies he couldn’t have otherwise received without the wind farm scam.

The guy is no dummy. We’ll run short of cheap clean water, long before we run out of oil. Like I said, crazy like a fox.

Thank you RK,
I thought this wind-for-water scam was common knowledge. Judging by the comments, apparently it is not.
Now, I fail to understand why Environmentalists hate *water* pipelines, after all, what is more “natural” than water? In any event, Mr. Pickens is not senile, unless ‘crazy like a fox’ is how it is meant. He gets tax subsidies for wind, property right-of-ways for ‘whatever’, and he pumps water cheap, and sells it high.

Several years ago, Slick Pickens formed Mesa Water out in the Panhandle. He thought
it was a sure thing he would be able to get a contract to supply water to
the booming Dallas-Fort Worth area. But they developed their own local
supplies and he’s been sitting on unusable water he bought for years. And
landowners are none to happy that he has been trying to use eminent domain
to get his right-of-way.

What Pickens REALLY wants is his right-of-way and needs the Texas
political pressure to force an eminent domain action so he can get to
market investments he is sitting on with no return. If he gets his right
of way, he controls the path to get natural gas from the Anadarko Basin
and subsidized wind power to market; you produce it, you get to pay the
Pickens Turnpike to get it to market. And while he’s at it, he can lay
the water pipe in the hopes he can get the Mesa Water monkey off his back.

One thing that more nuclear plants would contribute to the country’s energy portfolio is hydrogen. Hydrogen has many important uses today (e.g., processing sour crudes at petroleum refineries) not to mention future uses in hydrogen-fueled fuel cell vehicles.

Most all hydrogen today is produced from natural gas – not where you want to get your H2. But with a several hundred more nuclear plants running, guess what they can do in the middle of the night when no one wants their output? That’s right: electrolysis of water, and it can be done at the point of use, no pipelines or tanker trucks required.

One point about the variability of wind power that many have ignored is that when the wind energy comes from hundreds or thousands of square miles, the variability factor is smoothed out to a certain degree. Note that Texas has quadrupled wind energy use since 2001 without wind variability becoming an issue- yet. The electricity for my household has come from wind energy for the last 4 years, and variability has not been an issue. As the percentage of wind energy in Texas variability will become more of an issue. I have read that the reason for the 20% by 2030 for wind energy proposed, instead of 40% or 70 % for example, is that the 20% takes into account the variability factor. Need to research that.

I would disagree w Pickens regarding using natural gas for vehicles. I would go more for liquefied coal. Wind is NOT the only solution. It is one of many partial solutions, nuclear included, more domestic drilling included.

At this stage, wind energy appears to be much more able to stand on its own than ethanol from corn, or solar electric.

I toured our local natural gas-fired power plant a few years back. Due to Air Quality Management Board restrictions (the plant sits right on the beach in So Cal) it’s only supposed to fire up in extreme emergencies. And natural gas is so astronomically more expensive than hydro-generated power the power company is loathe to turn it on.

And when they do finally decide to turn it on and meet all the air quality restrictions, as I recall, it takes days to get the gas fired turbines fully on line from a cold start.

Bottom line: even clean-burning natural gas is a poor solution to electrical power generation.

The assumptions on the amount of natural gas have changed and continue to change rapidly. The total reserves of natural gas in all of North America of 274 trillion cubic feet (274 Tcf) is out of date. The Gas Technology Institute recently estimated that gas in place from gas shales (unconvential gas source) within the US is between 500 and 780 Tcf. Of this number approximately 30% can be profitably recovered with current technology. Currently gas from shale makes up only 10% of the gas we produce. This impressive number fails to include the most recent gas shale discovery in Northwest Louisiana known as the Haynesville Shale. Chesapeake Energy has estimated that the Haynesville Shale holds an additional 245Tcf of recoverable gas.

Gas and Coal to methanol/ethanol/butanol, nuclear, wind are all necessary. Flex fuel mandates are critical and inexpensive.

The 18% of natural gas we import from Canada is not a problem from my perspective but with gas shales coming on line, we may be exporting gas soon.

“I have long held the opinion that anything T. Boone Pickens does is designed primarily to transfer large amounts of money from your wallet to his. Pardon my skepticism but I can’t think of any other reason why he would come up with something so unworkable.”

Thank you choey, you have restored my faith in Humans.

“Didn’t somebody say something about long journeys beginning with a single step?

My favorite car is a ’67 Camero RS convertable with a blown 427 rat motor. I run on Av gas at about 16 $US a gallon. I don’t care about milage, or cost. I want power and if I can’t get it, I’ll ride a horse instead. Show me a Hybred that goes 0-60 in under 3 seconds and tops out over 150 MPH and I’ll bring my credit card, gold, diamonds or a bag full of money, your choice.
What will happen instead is the Demonrats will pass some unconstitutional legislation that makes me an outlaw for using my rights as an American citizen.

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
John F. Kennedy, In a speech at the White House, 1962
35th president of US 1961-1963 (1917 – 1963)

Sandra M: There’s a good way to put an end to the windmill plan now. Send a photographer to take pictures of all the dead birds around the windmills. PETA will howl and we’ll get on to other better ideas.

The National Research Council, a branch of the National Academies of Sciences, recently published Environmental Impacts of Wind-Energy Projects. For those who are concerned about the effect of wind energy on bird populations, here is the study’s conclusion.

“Clearly, bird deaths caused by wind turbines are a minute fraction of the total anthropogenic bird deaths—less than 0.003% in 2003 based on the estimates of Erickson et al. (2005)”

We can select the best part of T J Boone’s idea and employ wind mills to generate power. But, in addition solar energy (how about solar panels on every house/commercial building)should receive subsidies. Wave turbines, now being installed on the Spanish sea coast, should be considered, as the majority of Americans live by the coast lowering electric distribution costs. Even nuclear plants need to be constructed. What all of these energy programs have in common…produced in America, keeping jobs and the dollars in America and a cleaner environment. We must include the current oil/gas/coal industry and utility companies as key players in all these programs for if they are not part of it, they will use their vast resources to block it. America could be the leader in new energy power if we have leaders with vision.

What I wonder is how long environmentalists will support wind generation when the towers start being built in serious numbers. Each one has to be connected to the grid to work, unlike the small home windmills that turn the meter back, these turbines have to be powered with three phase current in order to work. That means high voltage transmission lines and service roads stretched across the landscape. Since the grid doesn’t store electricity, but produces it on demand, and we don’t yet know how to command the wind, I don’t see how this will really solve much.

Still, I think that electric cars are the future (they have terrific acceleration and no problems meeting Samford’s requirements), so we had better start building new generation plants using nuclear, gas and coal. (I think hydrogen is a long way off, except as an alternative to batteries, since me must produce it before we can burn it and that takes electricity.) We need to begin to tap our reserves of oil shale and quit pretending that by leaving the drilling and production to other countries who don’t have our scruples when it comes to protecting the planet, we’re really protecting the environment. It would be an economic bonanza and if we became an exporting nation again it would seriously undermine OPEC’s ability to fund terrorists and stir up revolutions in neighboring countries.

AST said: “We need to begin to tap our reserves of oil shale and quit pretending that by leaving the drilling and production to other countries who don’t have our scruples when it comes to protecting the planet, we’re really protecting the environment. It would be an economic bonanza and if we became an exporting nation again [...]”

You can’t be serious, can you? You actually think the US could become an oil exporter *again* (do you know when the last time the US was a net oil exporter?)

Do you have any idea of the size of oil imports into the US, versus production?

Do you know the history of the kerogen shale (mislabeled as “oil shale”) exploitation already attempted over the years, in the US and elsewhere?

Pickens is a believer that Peak Oil is near… and that explains his belief that we must take strong measures to redevelop our transportation system to reduce dependency upon oil, a depleting resource. Whether you believe Peak Oil is near or not, don’t misattribute Pickens’ motives as principally being that of an environmentalist; he is a businessman and is looking on how to make more money on the down-slope (in his perception at least) of oil production, while at the same time helping (again, at least in his perception) his country.

In the midst of all this interesting speculation, it would be a good idea to get cracking and pass the “Open Fuel Standards Act (S.3303, HR.6559) requiring that all new cars sold in the U.S. be fully flex-fueled — that is, capable of running equally well on gasoline, ethanol, and methanol.”

The flex fuel concept is that you can start in the morning with a full tank of gasoline, drive 200 miles, fill up with E85, drive 200 miles, fill up with M85, drive another 200 miles and fill up with whatever you want and is available. You don’t have to choose one specific fuel, you have fuel choice.

Yes, we will use biomass, but the primary feed stocks in the next few years will be bio waste, like switchgrass or sugarbeet waste, not diverted human food, like corn.

While this government requirement will add about $100 to the cost of each car to add the already existing technology to the fuel system, the cost savings will be enormous. There would also be costs associated with service station pump and tank conversions, but these would be covered out of the profits of selling the much cheaper fuel. The other tremendous benefit is that the feed stocks can be grown virtually anywhere, freeing the entire world from the stranglehold of OPEC and the expense of discovering and recovering new stocks. If you think gas at $4+/gal here is tough, try $10 in Africa. This is a world security issue. Unless you want to start dealing with Sharia compliant banks and business, publishers and printers, we had better do something to stop the massive wealth transfer now going on.

If all autos sold in the U.S. are flex fuel capable, the market will take care of the fuel production and pricing. Brazil has been working out the kinks for about 30 years (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Brazil)and they’ve got production down to about $1/gal. I have yet to see a show stopper argument against the flex fuel concept. Inertia and Saudi inspired PR about food prices seem about the extent of the negative.

I have been studying and monitoring renewable energy for the last several years with increasing interest. There are several interesting features in this domain space worth analyzing.

At some point we will definately encounter increasing and accelerating costs to extract fossil fuels – the cost of oil is market driven and very sensitive to supply and demand influences. Coal, uranium and natural gas all face similar market-driven forces. Energy demand will only grow as will demand for water. Most alternative fuels and all conventional and nuclear power generation require water, lot’s of water for either refining or direct cooling. Availability of water is more and more unpredictable in many parts of North America. Increased cycles of sustained drought followed by flooding will offset any gains in productivity of conventional agriculture production approaches, limiting corn and soybeans as a useful fuel source in North America. Algae and switch grass is at least 10 years away from any serious contributions.

Low water states combined with commodity volatility dictate a renewable energy source disconnected from commodity markets. This leaves solar and wind combined with an intelligent grid not unlike what is available with re-routing internet traffic… This leaves us with solar (direct PVC or other more advanced technologies) and wind energy as the only viable, long-term solution. This is why Germany and other advanced nations (that have even less wind asset than the US) are moving in a very meaningful and commited way towards the full deployment of wind energy as a major contributor to their energy portfolio. A semi-autonomous national electric grid combined with A/C and DC circuits with wind and solar connected can supply 100% (yes 100%) of America’s energy needs. A distributed energy portfolio also offers energy security by creating automatic circuit bypass and power management… TBP at full capacity represents less than 1% of what will be required in a fully deployed system. We spent over $2 trillion building the internet in the US and spent over $1 trillion in Iraq. Why not spend $1 trillion employing Americans within America to build the energy grid, the solar arrays and the wind farms? With the multiplier effect this could be the economic stimulus package that truly raises our standard of living.

Freetoken, if shale is economically unfeasible, then what’s the downside to opening the Green River formation up to production? If it doesn’t make economic sense, who’s going to bother bidding on the right to despoil the environment? Do you think companies make money on environmental damage alone?

The Brazil model is deceptive. Sure they have flex fuel, but the main method they have used to get energy independance is a $10,000/yr auro registration fee that limits who can drive.
I love ethanol and what it has done for the corn belt economy, but I do noth think the Congress has any business mandating universal flex fuel. They are tempted because a lot of flex fuel cars can’t find fuel. Their mandate would just expand that. Apparently, they are also considering ordering service statsions to invest $400,000 in E85 pumps. Meanwhile, there is not enough supply to justify any of this, and there never will be.
We just don’t need a bunch of lawyers who have never spent a day in business trying to design and order unrealistic national systems. A lot of alternative energy is regional, not national and distribution will develop as supply increases.
Why do we need to stay with filling stations, anyway? There is an actress who has been plugging biodeisel on TV. She orders it on the internet and has it delivered by UPS. If you don’t have to pump fuel out of the ground, you could pick it up anywhere. Aisle 10.

1) A line of windmills from Texas to North Dakota
2) A transmission line connecting them – so somewhere on that line the wind is always blowing.
3) That transmission line connected and load balanced to the existing, mainly East/West, grid.
4) Each windmill at its rated average power will replace that much natural gas used to power peakers. Why? Because Natural gas is a light portable fuel easy to modify fleets to use. He is not suggesting modifying every car. Listen carefully to him. He just wants to reduce imported oil.
5) He doesn’t say it but all those windmills will provide good employment dollars in the US (Not outsourcealbe) to people in the US to maintain and repair them. In other words – TAXPAYERS.

As somebody living in the MidWest and not scientifically retarded like Politicians and Lawyers (That Prime, GRADE A Washington crap) I pray you one day figure it out.

As to all the other solutions. Some are long, some are short and do them all. But, Pickens is a good short term fix. Good in many ways.

Purchasing a commodity that we use to generate prosperity is not “a transfer of wealth”, and it certainly isn’t “wrecking our economy” to make that purchase. Calling our energy purchases “a transfer of wealth” is a false premise. GIGO.

T. Boone swore (at age 82) that his latest foray into how we achieve “energy independence” was not personally (or fiancially) motivated.

I would like to believe that this lifelong “awl” man has really thought the thing through, but I honestly don’t know.

There’s one thing I know for sure. Continuing to rely on supply (or even partial supply) from countries that have vowed to use their black gold to cripple the United States (Iran, Venezuela and, to some extent, the Saudis) is a hugely losing proposition.

Robert, not everyone understands it, but you
ARE A HERO!
What you’ve done to promote
A SOBER REALISTIC SCIENTIFIC UNDERSTANDING

is AN EYEOPENER at the HISTORICAL LEVEL

Well, unfortunately looks like USA is falling and enemy will have a good chance to destruct our economy in the next several months

Also it seems that rotten establishment of this used to be Great Country is failing all of us

But after we will get seriously hit

and looks like it is inevitable and tens of millions or more likely over 100 or 200 millions of Americans will be dead after the biological attack planed by kremlin-beijing axes under the disguise of `islamists`:

those who will survive will have on their agenda to create an alternative energy supply and then they will resort to your plan

Because there going to be no other way

Oil infrastructure will most likely be destroyed as a priority target by russian spetznaz;
restoration of oil industry will be very costly;

ALCOHOL ALTERNATIVE will be the only solution for transportation fuel problem, least inexpensive and doable

It will secure our future victory, that will follow a temporary but a very bloody defeat((

I should THANK YOU AGAIN AND AGAIN ON BEHALF OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND OUR FUTURE GENERATIONS!

Your overlooking the economics. It will take a lot of concrete, copper and land to rigup that kind of power not to mention getting rite of way. The life span of those wind turbines is 20 years. The average yield has been a measly 20% and the windmill farms will be located far from the locations that need it most.

Then there’s the facts of the wind country of Denmark, king of windmills. It’s true windpower in Denmark accounts for 20% of Danish electrical production. However, Denmark does not ‘get’ 20% of it’s electricity form wind power. The windpower electricity is all exported to Sweden and Germany. It is not used because…it is unreliable. So when the Danes get some juice it is exported, unused and at a economic loss, to Sweden where it is used to pump water up into damns, in a way a battery bank. In Germany, it is dumped into the German power grid because Germany is so large, so electrical consuming that the half of Danish wind power it gets isn’t hardly notable. In a phrase, it is dumped, again at a loss to the Danes into the German grid.

The Danes get their electricity like the rest of us, by powerplants. That is what they keep and use. So to be more accurate, the 20% generated in Denmark is folded into the Danish/Swedish/German grid where that amount looks large in little Denmark but is tiny in Sweden and Germany. It’s like under 1%. All this is done at a loss.

Also, Denmark is the most perfect place in the world to put turbines. Again a unique environment. And the Danes themselves do not use this electricity. It is too costly, too unreliable so they pay the Swedes and Germans to take the electricity that they ‘dump’ into their electrical generation schemes. The Danes do not and can not use windpower in a modern economy. Neither can we. We can build it. We can do it, but we will have to pay to dump it. So, what is the point of this other than feeling good and burning money?

And much of Europe is building coal plants, not solar of wind farms as their consumers can’t subsidize all their power needs. Go to windaction-dot-org to read all the articles and letters against windfarms from everywhere. You talk more like an investor than an engineer. Wind is subsidized 14x+ the subsidy paid for nuclear and a whopping 53x that of coal. The same goes for solar, it can’t stand on it own.

Wind energy would be better implemented on a smaller, local scale without heavy subsidization. Same with solar. Wind and solar farms would be best implemented on a research, prototype level till they become viable. Right now it’s and investors scam, like corn ethanol. Pickens already admitted that it was profit motivated and without government subsidization, with tax breaks, his proposal is ‘blowen in the wind’. So much for his pea pickens heart.

Zubrin has more than just a lot on the ball, he is quite frankly brilliant. He has made the vital point elsewhere that only 3% of our electricity comes from oil.

So whenever you hear a politician talk about energy independence and then rattle off the usual litany of solar, wind, tidal, or even nuclear and coal, realize that that politico doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Power generation is not the place to free us from foreign oil, we’re pretty much there already.

The real target is transportation, where more than 90% of cars on the road are gasoline-only.

Hybrids aren’t the answer, because they only reduce the rate of our growth of gasoline use, are at the highly improbably best, reduce it somewhat. But OPEC can just cut production further to match, and keep prices up (and fueling world mischief).

Flex fuel vehicles are the ONLY serious solution. And they have to a MANDATE. Get over it, conservatives and libertarians. The market would probably get us there in a few decades, but we don’t have the time or the money to wait. OPEC is a consortium of government-forced monopolies, socialist state-run firms, that are looting the productive sectors of the world.

Refusing to break out of this straitjacket with a minimally intrusive mandate (like seatbelts) is suicidally stupid, like objecting to the feds telling Ford to make tanks instead of cars during WW2.

We can have a net wash or reduction of big government if you want by also eliminating the boondoggle of gov’t hydrogen fuel cell research.

George (in the comments above) claims: “In addition, natural gas has the unique advantage that it’s LESS EXPENSIVE than gasoline while alcohol fuels are currently more expensive. ”

WRONG. If we drop our tarriffs on Brazilian ethanol, the price will drop sharply. Also, methanol is currently selling, without subsidy, for a small fraction of gasoline’s price (about $1.37 a gallon, and $2.04 will get you enough methanol to take you the same distance as a gallon of gas). Methanol is inherently going to be cheap because it can be made from sewage, garbage, unused stalks/leaves/stems/roots of plants (including the corn for ethanol), etc.

On the down-side, simpler alcohols (ethanol and methanol) will give you less MPG (miles per gallon) than gasoline (you said mph instead by mistake).

However, there are OTHER alcohol fuels as well that get you very close to, as good as, or better energy content than gasoline. (Propanol, butenol, many others).

A flex fuel car that can run on methanol (the simplest alcohol) can run ANY alcohol fuel, including the better MPG ones.

And of course there are other aspects to performance beyond mere MPG. For one thing, there’s miles per DOLLAR. If we opened ourselves up to imported ethanol, its price would be below gasoline’s with no need for a subsidy. Methanol already sells well below gasoline’s price right now.

Horsepower! That’s what most people think of when they hear “performance”. And alcohol fuel is higher octane, 100, 120 even. Gives you a LOT more pep and zoom. Think SUPER duper premium gasoline. That’s one reason why racing leagues from the Indy 500 to Formula One to midget cars use alcohol fuel, and have since the 60s.

Another big onese is that alcohol fuels are also safer in crashes, less likely to explode.

Of course, on-road performance isn’t the only reason to favor alcohol.

Alcohol fuels are biodegradable and break down readily in case of spills, including from underground gas station tanks, or from big tankers. The Exxon Valdez is still killing wildlife; if it has been carrying ethanol or methanol, the problem would have been over in days.

They burn much more cleanly, making them a clean way to burn fossil fuels for transportation (remember you can make methanol from coal and natural gas). They also are much cleaner to “make” – that is, grow.

Finally of course weaning us from oil would drastically help our economy (which has suffered the equivalent of a 40% income tax hike) and national security (hundreds of billions going to Iran, Saudi, Venezuela, Russia even if we don’t directly buy their oil, because it’s traded worldwide and wherever we buy it from helps prop up the price).

It is obvious that you know nothing about Picken’s ulterior motives, which is having the state use eminent domain and allow Picken’s to lay his pipeline for water through property owner’s lands. How stupid of you to think that this corporate raider has anything but the accumulation of more wealth in mind, all the while acting like this is about wind power.

“So whenever you hear a politician talk about energy independence and then rattle off the usual litany of solar, wind, tidal, or even nuclear and coal, realize that that politico doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

Usually, the politician is engaging in deliberate obfuscation. America doesn’t have an “energy problem”. America has a PETROLEUM problem. The politicians know completely what they’re talking about. They’re talking about confusing the matter so we don’t focus on their OPEC trading partners and political sponsors.

I think Dr. Zubrin pretty much makes that case in his book ENERGY VICTORY which you seem to have read.

In this election season, I don’t feel like letting our elected leaders off the hook by saying that they don’t know what they’re talking about. They DO know what they’re talking about. They’re talking about deflecting our concerns for gasoline and petroleum prices and obfuscating it by talking about “energy”.

We should find out to what degree this is the case when the Open Fuels Standard Act comes to a vote in both houses of the Congress. My congressman is already waffling about “the cost of food”. As I’m sure you know, that arguement is bunk.

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